Wisdom of the Ages
by Egann
Summary: A prequil for Ocarina of Time. Link's father is struggling to end the war ravaging Hyrule while dealing with his own loss.
1. Act 1 Chapter 1

Wisdom of the Ages

Act 1

Chapter 1

A flicker of red against the blue monochrome of the forest was all it took. The cloaked figure sprinted at the nearest tree, took two steps on it's trunk, then grasped the lowest branch and climbed onto it. He crouched against the trunk and looked around for the torch as he thrust his hand into one of his tunic's pockets.

Another flicker came. The source was coming closer. He fumbled faster in the pocket and found a leather thong. He whipped it out and tied the eye patch onto his face.

A mumbled hubbub of children's voices stood out over the ambient noise. The man adjusted the patch onto his right eye and looked out over the forest for the children.

The mumbling drew nearer and an orange dot flickered between the trees.

"...grrr... Mido, this lady's heavy. Can't ya' spell me off?"

"I'm the only one who knows the place we're supposed to bury her. I must lead.

The orange light disappeared and reappeared one more time as it rounded a tree a dozen fathoms away. It was an oil lamp held by a boy wh looked no older than ten. He turned and spoke to the procession behind him.

"Come along. I want this to be over." The light flickered over six other children carrying a woman on a stretcher.

"Yeah. Tell me about it."

"Wouldn't you know it. The only Hylian I'm ever going to see is a dead one."

They were passing directly under him. The man looked away and covered his mouth. He had known she was dead, but knowing and seeing were totally different matters. It was only several minutes after they entourage had passed that his throat had loosened enough for him to breathe freely.

He took off the eye patch. His fingers noticed a slight moistness to the fabric. However long he sat still, staring into the darkness and caressing the patch with his thumb he neither knew nor cared. Only when a keese cawed at him did his torpor end and he continued on his way.


	2. Act 1 Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Nabooru knelt. "I have come."

Koume sat up. "Whether or not you would come was never in question. This tribunal is now in meeting. The defendant stands charged of disobeying a direct order to reclaim all resources and kill all Hylain civilians on our northern frontier," She giggled. "Do you have anything to say in your defense and how do you plea?

" 'For when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.' I believe that and I was acting accordingly, so yes. I plead guilty."

Ganondorf's eyes cracked open. "Isn't that a hylian saying?"

The color drained from Nabooru's face. "Yes." He's still only a kid of fifteen and he's already overseeing a tribunal?!

"How very interesting." Ganondorf closed his eyes again.

Kotake sat up. "I see no reason to prolong this meeting any longer. The penalty for disobeying a direct order is two weeks in the well. Any objections?... Then this meeting is concluded."

"Not quite," Ganondorf sighed. "This isn't only a matter of 'disobeying orders' anymore. Nabooru disobeyed because she has allowed hylian thought to infect her mind. She didn't disagree because she merely failed to complete the order, but she deliberately disobeyed for a reason. That's treason."

Nabooru felt a pit growing in her stomach.

"The punishment for treason is sin leyn."

Kotake was visibly distraught. "Nabooru...could you excuse us for a moment, please?"

"Of course." Nabooru stood and walked to the entrance of the hall.

"Ganondorf you fool! What the hell do you think you are doing?" Kotake growled. "Nabooru is one of our best officers and is a member of an upper caste!"

He chuckled. "What do you think you're doing? I'm not about to pretend that we are going to treat actions like this with a token punishment."

"Token punishment?!" Now Koume was furious as well.

"If Nabooru isn't going to obey my orders to the letter, I have no desire for her to be in command any longer, regardless of her skills, popularity, or caste." Ganondorf closed his eyes again.

"Still…" Kotake sighed "sin leyn has never been used on a member of an upper caste. Nabooru's Green Caste is the top level."

Ganondorf rested his chin on his knuckles. "I don't care for precedence either."

Silence. Koume shifted uneasily.

"Tell me. How go your brainwashing experiments?"

"uh… Quite well. Why?" Koume said "What does that have to do with anything?" Or even better: how does he even know about our experiments?

A faint smile flickered across Ganondorf's left cheek. "Everything."


	3. Act 1 Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The man knelt before the largest of the trees.

A deep groaning from the tree slowly formed into a viscous voice. "Welcome, Egann. I have been expecting you."

"Is Link still alive?"

"Yes."

He breathed a sigh of relief.

"I want him to be raised as a kokiri." The tree groaned.

Egann was silent.

"You say nothing? He is your son."

"It was my responsibility to prevent this war from happening. It was my duty once it began to protect my people… I couldn't even protect my family…"

The Great Deku Tree's branches wilted. "Did you really think once this war began that you could wage it without someone dyin-?"

"-That that someone was my wife?"

The branches drooped further. "You couldn't save her because you had to protect a settlement….It's been your family's fate for as long as I can remember to be Hyrule's vicars of suffering. Don't give up: you accomplish far more than you think."

Egann stood and turned to leave. "I didn't come for a pep-talk. Now that my family has been dismembered all I can do is ask for your advice."

"How goes the war?"

"We've achieved an armistice with the Zora and the Gorons. The Gerudo, however….they sent back our last diplomat without his intestines…."

"Well. I guess you know where to start, then."

"Yeah. I guess I do."


	4. Act 1 Chapter 4

Chapter 4

She was suspended from the ceiling. Humiliating.

A door closed behind her.

"_Sin leyn_ punishment will now commence." A cold prick from a knife slid up her back.

Her outer garments slithered their way to the floor.

"In being treasonous you no longer warrant the clothes that identify your caste. In fact… you don't deserve any clothing at all." Another two flicks and all Nabooru's clothes were a lifeless lump.

The Gerudo collected the clothes and threw them onto a fire. "Now…shall we get to more…_interesting_…things?" She returned to Nabooru's side and checked the restraints. She double-checked the ankles.

She walked behind Nabooru. A chest creaked open. "As that I'm going to use all of these I don't think order is particularly important." A cat-of-nine-tails whistled.

Nabooru cringed.

"My. My. You're easily excitable. I haven't even hit you yet." The interrogator put the end of the handle against Nabooru's cheek, then slid the tails in front of her nose.

Her breath was shallow and fast.


	5. Act 1 Chapter 5

Chapter 5

_Dang. I knew it would be dark again when I got here._

The drawbridge jutted out at an odd angle. It obviously didn't close correctly anymore.

_The Gerudo raid must've really been something for the drawbridge to be left open at night like this, but I still don't get it.…_ Egann stopped in front of the wall and stroked his beard thoughtfully. _It isn't the Gerudo style to wage an all-out assault like that._ He started to walk parallel to the moat.

Blast scars stained the white limestone. _…Plus I heard that they didn't even leave any casualties when they finally retreated…. If that few were injured or killed, why'd they retreat?_ The moat was higher than normal.

_Don't tell me-_ Egann walked to the edge of the moat. _The water's too murky to tell. If they did do something, it's covered up._ He turned right and walked upstream. Sure enough. The river feeding the moat was crystal clear. _Cover? Then what did they hide in or do to the moat that needed to be covered up? How did they make this much water murky? He walked back to the moat and tasted the water._

He abruptly spat it out. _Sewage._ He ran back to the river and rinsed his mouth out._ Simple and effective. They broke a detritus aqueduct into the moat… and I don't know that much about Castle Town's plumbing._ He sighed._ Another research project…._

Egann climbed onto one of the drawbridge's guidestones and jumped onto the drawbridge.

A guard slept next to the crank. His pole-arm had rolled into a corner.

"I know… graveyard shifts are vicious…" Egann returned the weapon to the guard's side. "I've had a few of them, too."

The guard dreamed on.

"You wouldn't notice anything, even if you were awake."

End Act 1


	6. Act 2 Chapter 1

Act 2

Chapter 1

Ganondorf bound together several parchments and walked up to the cell and turned to the guard. "Open it."

The Gerudo fidgeted. "But sir. Kotake and Koume said-..."

Ganondorf made eye-contact with her.

"Yessir," She mumbled and opened the gate.

A whiffing sound foreshadowed a sharp crack. The limp chains on the wall rattled.

"Please excuse us, Maeroo."

"But SIR!"

"Tell me: have you even gotten a whimper from this stone for the last hour? I guarantee she'll be more...responsive… once I'm finished."

"Sir." She bowed and headed for the door.

"Close the door on your way out."

The door creaked. A latch slid into place.

Nabooru's breathing was slow and steady.

Ganondorf walked to the nearest table and cleared it with a single swipe from his left hand. Tools clattered to the ground.

Nabooru's eyelids flickered.

He dropped the parchments onto the table and lit a lamp. "When do you intend to stop pretending to be unconscious? I'm not as easily fooled as Maeroo is."

Her eyes slowly cracked open. Ganondorf let out a single chuckle.

"I've reviewed your record." Ganondorf leaned on the edge of the table. "Pretty impressive."

"Isn't it a little late to say that now that I'm condemned to die?" Besides her lips, the rest of her body stayed limp.

"Hardly. Your record is good. TOO good. Your last idea with using Castle-town's sewers to contaminate their own water was particularly impressive. It's almost a shame that Koume discovered the moat isn't actually used for drinking water."

"So you figured it out. I guess I deserve to be here."

Ganondorf chuckled again. "Heh...I..." he reached for the parchments and drew out the top one "knew all along."

He held the parchment up to the lamp. "This is the diagram of Castle-Town's sewer system. THIS..." He pulled out the next parchment, "is the diagram that you claimed to have stolen from the Hyrule Corps of Engineering Archive division. While they are undeniably similar...as you can see...they are significantly different. Drinking water for the town in your diagram is brought in from the moat, but here there is a well under the fountain in the town's square that provides the water."

He put the papers down. "On looking at a paper like this, you realized that a minor edit would reverse the water's direction from the center to the extremities to the other way around."

Nabooru turned her head. "Out of sheer curiosity... how did you figure it out?"

"In an actual siege like Castle Town's walls are intended for, the moat may be an obstacle, but as that it's outside the wall it is effectively in the attacker's territory." He turned and looked her in the eye. "It makes no sense to put your water supply in the hands of your opponent."

"Needless to say when I figured out where your _true_ allegiance was...I was..._disappointed._ It also explained many of your actions, like why you insisted on being the one to infiltrate Castle Town and blow out the sewers. It wasn't because of any desire for personal glory, but because you were afraid that if anyone else did it they would discover that it wouldn't work."

"Very astute. I guess I really do deserve to die."

Ganondorf laughed. "You can cut the act. I know that you've been trying your best to keep time. You know that six days have passed, so that means that you only have one day left. After that and you are banished into the desert you aren't going to kill yourself. You're going to be free!"

Ganondorf took the next parchment in the stack out. "Of course, I didn't _just_ study your combat career. Among the many leaders the Gerudo have had over the years, you are by _far_ the most popular with your subordinates, and I know why."

Nabooru started staring ahead blankly again. "Enlighten me."

"Oh, I'll do more than that. I'll tell you what you did _wrong,_ too." Ganondorf held up the parchment. "Your first act as a commander was -as it always is- to select a first-officer who is competent. Generally Gerudo leaders have chosen members of their own caste or higher for this, but you picked a purlple for it. This showed to all your followers that you were far more interested in actual competence than in prolonging caste superiorities, and they loved it."

"Of course, being loved by your followers is a good thing, but it isn't the best solution. What about your peers? Do you think that 'love' will keep them in line?" Ganondorf scoffed. "I think not."

"The best way to deal with your peers is _**fear.**_"

"Fear?" Nabooru snorted. "Look more carefully at that history of Gerudo leaders. The ones that used fear didn't last long. As soon as they were in power someone rebelled."

"Precisely. Fear alone can't do what love can, but love alone can't do what fear can, either." Ganondorf got off the table and put his face within inches of Nabooru's. "The ideal leader has to be both loved and feared."

"Of course, the position of being both "loved and feared" is all well and good on paper, but it has been all but impossible for me to achieve...Until tonight. Ganondorf returned to the table and pulled out the last parchment. "Here's your replacement."

Nabooru only needed to glance at the parchment to see what he had done. She was a member of the purple caste.

Ganondorf lowered the parchment and put his face much closer to her's than he had before." Thanks to your traitorousness, I can now take a leaf from your book and promote a member of the lowest caste to my side, while punishing you -a member of the top caste- as much as any member of a lower caste has been. The bottom will love me. The top will fear me. _Both __**loved**__ and __**feared.**_" He withdrew and returned to the table.

"To get back to what you are going to do once you are banished, you've been planning...haven't you?"

Nabooru looked away.

"I didn't think someone so often characterized as 'clever,' 'resourceful,'... oh, and my favorite: 'incredibly spirited' would give up so easily. That...and that you are probably more familiar with the desert than anyone else alive."

"Let's take a look at what you know. You know that the desert is wider North to South than it is East to West. Much wider. You also know that we are presently on the East side and that if we want to make sure you don't know where you are being dropped off, we'll need to waste time making circles, so you will almost certainly be closer to the East side than anywhere else." Ganondorf lowered his voice. "Your precious Hylians are also on the _East_ side of the desert. You'll head East for sure."

Ganondorf collected the parchments. "Yeah you're clever, but I'm cleverer."

"It's 'I'm _more clever._' "

"Well. We'll see who's cleverer then." Ganondorf smiled as he strode to the door. "Maeroo, you may continue with your work."

"Yessir! Alright ya' little wench. You won't be ready for tomorrow unless we _dress_ those scratches!" She giggled maniacally.


	7. Act 2 Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Egann paced back and forth in front of Hyrule Castle's Bureau of Archives. Of the two things he detested about being a swordsman, both might have to be confronted in an exceptionally recalcitrant research project: Bureaucrats and Bars.

The bureaucrat's job is to have all the information you need...and to not give it to you because of some rule so obscure and obtuse it's only designation is an aggregate of numbers with a sprinkle of dashes for good measure. If you're really lucky the rule might actually have a name.

_Why is it that royalty loves bureaucracies so much? _Egann girded his loins and marched up to the door. _Anyone can tell you that libraries are better. You can even restrict information if you need to..._

The door scraped open. "...Excuse me..."

_...At least this is better than a bar..._

A man in his late forties sat behind a desk, furiously scratching chicken-tracks across papers. Scratching and scratching until all else was inaudible.

He hasn't noticed me. "Excuse me..."

"I heard you the first time." The man stayed fixated on his writing. He picked up a paper from one corner of his desk to reveal a brass etching.

T. M. Kase, Assistant Klerk

"I need information."

"Most people who come here do." The man collected the papers from his desk, stacked them, tied them together, then dropped them onto a large piles of bundles exactly identical to it next to his desk. He picked up a bundle from the opposite side of his desk, undid it, and inundated his desk with another torrent of papers. "What kind of 'information?'"

"Diagrams of Hyrule Castle Town's Sewer system...and a list of who else has accessed them. You see-"

"I don't care to 'see' anything." The man pushed his chair away from the desk. One leg whined, another growled against the marble floor. "Diagrams if the sewer system...that's pretty standard...but a list of who's seen them...That's restricted."

The man stood and walked to a shelf that had papers drooping from stacks on every shelf.

"Restriction won't be an issue. I'm a swordsman: Egann of Therin Province."

The man nodded and pulled a seemingly random stack of papers from the shelf. He flipped through it. "Agriculture... Amnesty... Ah, here it is: Architecture." He flipped through a small folder within the bundle. "The list's here, but there's no diagrams to go with it. Not even a checking out notice from another department. It's missing."

Egann poked his head over the man's shoulder.

"...And no one's even listed as having looked up the specs for over three years."

_…Looks like I'll be going to the bar after all._ "Thanks for your help."

The clerk handed him the slip with the names on it. "Sign it," He said. "I'll put a notice on it that the diagram was missing."

Egann signed it, then watched as the clerk carefully replaced it, tied the folder closed again, then replaced it on the shelf, then without another word returned to his scribbles at his desk.

Egann closed the office door behind him._ If it's not there and there's no archive of who took it, someone must have stolen it. Knowing the Gerudo's skills at sneaking, that isn't inconceivable. Heck, I have enough skills at sneaking to get in and out of a dusty archive room like that without being seen…._

He turned and started to walk back towards the gate. _The problem is that archive system is so complex and has so many files that I couldn't ever hope to find a specific diagram in that room without being caught. It would just take too much time. ___

_…And so here I am…going to a bar to get information again…_

Egann cringed at the thought of the bar. Bureaucracies were merely annoyingly impersonal. Bars could be outright deadly….


	8. Act 2 Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The sand seared at her bare feet. Nabooru collapsed onto her knees.

A horse snorted and an instrument clicked open. "Well," the Gerudo officer said, "I think this is close enough. Let's get this over with." She dismounted.

A firm hand tugged at the ropes binding Nabooru's arms together. "I know that I'm supposed to untie you and give you the dagger for you to kill yourself on, but…"

Something thumped onto the sand a few paces away.

"I think that it's more interesting this way. If you aren't careful not to stray too far, you'll never find it… Have fun." The officer remounted her horse. The thumping in the sand slowly faded.

_Damn it!_


	9. Act 2 Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Egann walked through Kakariko and knocked on a door.

Impa pulled it open. "Well. You're a sight. Come on in."

He stepped in and sat down in a chair next to her table.

"Out of curiosity, when was the last time you ate or had a decent night's sleep."

"Three days. Why?"

Impa sighed. "Just like you: get busy and not remember anything else in the universe... Wasn't your last assignment to defend Faron Post...and have you forgotten entirely about your family." She sat down in the chair across from Egann.

Egann rubbed his thighs. "A Gerudo raiding party razed Faron Post three days ago...well...you've seen the Gerudo at work..."

Impa's jaw dropped. "Aerin and Link?"

Egann shook his head. "Aerin's dead, but before she died she left Link with the Great Deku Tree, so he's going to be raised as a Kokiri."

"...I'm sorry..." Impa looked at the table.

Silence.

Egann sighed. "Have you heard the story about what happened last time I started asking questions in a bar?"

Impa giggled, then sniffed. "I heard that it was a set-up. Why?"

"I need some information...the Department of Archives hasn't got anything."

"So you're going to forget about them by burying yourself in your work?" Impa felt anger starting to well up.

Egann was totally impassive. "It worked last time."

Impa flipped the table over at him. "Oh, forgive me for forgetting how you were when I first met you: an orphan with no discernible talents, yet aced the entrance exam to the academy through sheer determination. For the first five seconds I knew you I thought that you were like everyone else and had something to prove. After that I realized you had a past to bury." She marched over to her cabinet and got a pot down. "Of all the partners I could have wound up with, I had to wind up with a rock..."

Egann looked over to the mangled remains of Impa's table, then looked back to Impa. She was putting a few ingredients in the pot. "What are you doing?"

"It wouldn't be very nice of me to throw the person who got me through the Academy...even if he _is_ a rock. You can stay here for the night...then I'll..._help you find that damned information..._" She slammed the cupboard closed.


	10. Act 2 Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Nabooru struggled with the dagger. It had taken her almost half an hour of rolling in the searing sand for her to finally roll into it, and now she was struggling to pry it out of the sheath with her teeth. The leather thong that tied the dagger into the sheath was supposed to be tied with a slip-knot so that the dagger wouldn't fall out of the sheath but a firm tug would still release the dagger. Nabooru figured out that it had been tied with a granny knot _after_ she had given the knot a firm tug.

Leather isn't the most forgiving of yarns when it comes to untying knots with teeth. It will absorb saliva until the straps expand enough to make the knot turned into a Gordian knot...and if the leather isn't properly cured when it finally _does_ dry out the strap will have hardened into something closer to a rock than a strap.

Nabooru bit at the top overhand knot and pulled back. It gave slightly. She bit at it a few more times and the thong finally gave. She spat the straps out and bit the handle of the dagger. A firm tug freed it from the sheath.

She pulled her arms up to her face and started sawing at the knot binding them. Occasionally she risked guiding and adding extra force to the dagger by pushing on the flat with her fingers. Finally the ropes gave way.

Nabooru undid her blindfold and the bindings at her knees, then overviewed what she had: a sinlge strip of black cloth about two and a half feet long and an inch wide that had served as her blindfold, four pieces of hemp twine between six and ten inches from the bindings on her arms, a single three-foot segment of rope from her legs, and one dagger with a leather sheath. The sheath didn't even have any hooks or slits to attach it to clothing with. It just had a single slit at the bottom of the sheath to let water drain out if it ever got wet.

She wiped off the dagger and returned it to the sheath, then looked at the blindfold. She had been totally naked for a whole week now, and even though it was pointless in the middle of the desert, modesty was calling. It was doubtful that such a small strip of cloth could satiate that need.

She tried to wrap it around her waist. The two ends were a full inch apart. Modesty would have to wait after all. Finally, she opted to wrap it around her ankle to hold the sheath for her dagger, then as an afterthought she slid the shorter twines between the wraps and wrapped the whole thing in the longer rope segment to keep everything in place.

The dune next to her was one of the taller ones. Nabooru started to climb it to get her bearings, but with every step the sand sank half the distance. Finally she got to the top.

Water is everything for desert survival...and Nabooru didn't have any. She didn't even have a container to hold some in if she found some. In effect, even though she had been kept well hydrated durring her torture, she had lost enough blood and other fluids that she had two days -at most three- before dehydration killed her. She had to conserve the water already in her body and get out of the desert and to a decent water source before dehydration drained her strength to nothing.

She looked over the desert. Nothing but the ridgelines of dunes as far as the eye could see...except...

She squinted. She couldn't quite make out what it was at this distance. She got a quick direction from the sun. Assuming it was the middle of the afternoon, then whatever that was, it was South-East.

She started to walk down the hill in the direction of the disturbance. If it was a tree, chances were she could get some water from it, then she could rest until night.

When night finally did come, she would continue to head East until either dehydration killed her or she came to the Hyrule River.


	11. Act 3 Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Egann picked up the leg that had separated from Impa's table and put it against the board that it had been nailed to. The board had split along the grain where the leg had been nailed in. "So how's the Goron front been."

"It's cooled down quite a bit." Impa had apparently cooled off a bit. "Nothing major has happened for months while a tentative diplomatic exchange has gone on." She put a pot of soup she had been assembling onto the spit and started to light a fire under it with a flint and her dagger. "Still..." The flint scraped along her dagger, shooting sparks into a bundle of loose hemp fibers. "The scars from some of their early attacks are deep. It will take years to rebuild Kakariko." The hemp started smoking. She picked up the bundle and blew into it gently until it burst into flames. She stuck it against some small chunks of wood and started piling on bigger chunks.

Egann grunted and put the leg against where it had come off. It still fit, but would fall out every time the table was moved. He looked around the room for something he could use to bind it back into place.

Impa started to mess with a few other ingredients from her cupboard and started to make something else.

Egann spied the length of twine Impa had pulled the hemp from to make tinder. He picked it off the floor. "Can I borrow your dagger?"

"Sure." Impa handed him the handle.

He started spinning the point against the support strut next to where the leg had been. Spirals of wood shavings streamed to the floor.

"What happened to yours?" Impa pried. "Loose it?"

"Hmm?…Oh, my dagger." Egann spun the table around and started drilling from the other side. "I lost or broke most of my equipment during the fight at Faron Post. My sword's handle broke almost immediately after the fight began, so I switched to my dagger…Rhmmph." Egann struggled to finish the last bit of the hole. He picked up the leg to the table and started bending the nail down.

"You still haven't answered my question," Impa reminded him.

"I had to throw it to kill a Gerodo officer's mount. She was mowing down whatever defensive lines I could pull together… I couldn't find pikes...and you know how vulnerable infantry is to cavalry. After the Gerudo took the town I didn't have the option to go back and look for it. I'm sure that they took everything of any value before they burned the place down. Some Gerudo has to have it now."

Impa took the sheath for her dagger off her back and threw it to Egann. "Keep that one, then."

"You only ever use this dagger. What'll you use?"

"I don't think I'll need one." Impa took another pot and put this one directly on the flames. "…Besides, I've been looking at a tanto that's been collecting dust at the Bazaar. I was hoping that when this front died down it would go on sale…but it looks like that won't happen."

"Thank you." Egann took the twine and tied a knot on the end, then slid the twine through the loop that he'd bent the nail into. Finally, he put the leg against the table again and ran the twine through the hole he had drilled in the table and finished by lashing the line back onto the leg. He stood the table up.

Impa walked over and leaned on the table. The new joint gave slightly, but it didn't break. "You haven't lost your touch."

"It's a good idea not to in this field."

Impa pulled up her chair again. "So…what information did the Department of Archives not have?"

"Diagrams of Castle Town's underground aqueduct system. Sewage is leaking into the moat. My guess is that the Gerudo attack a week ago was cover for it to be sabotaged."

"No document saying where the diagrams are now?"

"None. It's another educated guess that they've been stolen to help the saboteurs and…make it harder for us to fix things." Egann leaned against the chair's back. "I may be good at stealing things, but no matter how I see it I could never have stolen that diagram."

"Security that tou-"

"Not security. Volume of papers I'd have to look through."

The fire cracked.

Impa stood up and marched over to the soup. She snagged a ladle and gave the broth a stir. "You think that it's possible that there's a double-agent who slipped the documents to the Gerudo and did the sabotage?"

"Double-agent? In a war based on race?!" Egann shooed the thought away.

"Well…" Impa propped the ladle on the side of the pot and returned to her seat. "The Gerudo are a race entirely of women. You think it's possible that…uhh…"

"No Gerudo in her right mind would ever submit herself to such a thing…" Egann turned away, then abruptly turned back "-but one might say she would."

"So you think it is possible."

"Don't get too carried away. It's nothing but speculation upon speculation."

Impa stood again and grabbed a pair of forceps. "I'll make some discrete inquiries. You… fix that moat." She grabbed the pot that had been sitting in the coals and pulled it onto the floor with the forceps.

"Glad you agree. Any ideas how I might do that?" Egann returned his boot to his foot and pulled his chair up to the table.

"As a matter of fact I do. I know someone who has the entire design for Castle Town's aqueducts in his head."

"Who?"

"The man who designed them." Impa opened the pot to reveal a row of soft biscuits. The rest of the pot was filled with hard-tack. "You'll need some trail food to get you there."


	12. Act 3 Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Nabooru trudged on. Her lips were starting to crack and her throat was so dry she couldn't speak even if she wanted to.

The sand was still cool, even though the sun was well over the horizon. That sure wouldn't last long.

She had originally intended to stop for the day to conserve water, but just as the sun cleared the horizon she had been struck with an intense acute headache and nausea. The fit was so closely associated with daybreak that it was a safe educated guess that her body was becoming unable to adapt to changes in the availability of light.

Along with it having been over a week since she had last eaten and she wasn't hungry at all, the dehydration must be progressing much faster than she had initially supposed. Rather than having two to almost three days, it looked unlikely she would manage a full day, even.

The sand dunes abruptly stopped and were replaced with sandstone. _I must_ be getting close. Then she heard it: a distant roar. The roar unique to very large quantities of water moving very quickly: Hyrule River.

She picked up her pace. The roar was still faint, but it was getting louder.

She skidded to a stop and flailed her arms desperately to prevent from falling forward. Finally she managed to make herself turn so that she could fall onto her stomach. She crawled back up to the edge. The water was down there alright. Almost one thousand feet straight down.

Nabooru had heard that the Hyrule River had eroded this chasm. Obviously anyone who said that had never seen it: erosion makes for steep slopes, not outright vertical cliffs. She looked to her left and to her right. There was no path to descend further on down and it was entirely possible that the Great Falls to the North and Lake Hylia to the South were both impossibly distant. She would die of thirst within sight of water. The last obstacle was just too powerful for her to ever overcome.

She gave the canyon one more look over. There was nothing she could use and no path she could follow down to the water…except a series of thin tan lines that ran down the cliff. It was an exchange pulley.

She walked toward the ropes.

The Gerudo lacked the Hylain's skills for architecture: they had tried several times, but had never managed to make a bridge that spanned the Hyrule River. So they had to improvise with exchange pulleys. The idea was simple: on the way down you would counterbalance the equipment with a barrel of water. As long as the equipment weighed more than the water barrel, a Gerudo at the top could use a friction knot to control the speed of decent. The way back up was balanced with a barrel of earth from the other side.

There were problems, of course. For a single rope to go from the top of the chasm to the water, the rope would have to way so much that it would break from it's own weight. The weight of the ropes would also start to affect the exchange pulleys by making braking at the end of the rope almost impossible. Between these two factors, exchange pulleys had to be broken up into stages. If the stages were longer than one hundred feet, it was light equipment only. People were allowed on one hundred foot segments, and the segments had to be seventy feet or less for heavy equipment.

Of course, Nabooru didn't have a person on the top to control her decent with a friction knot, nor did she have a counterweight set on the bottom. She would have to arrest each of the pulleys and freely repel down the stationary line.

She came up to the first line and undid the equipment around her ankle. Arresting the pulleys would be difficult without having anything designed to do so. If she just jabbed a rock into the pulley, a firm tug on the rope might loosen it or it might force the rock into the pulley with such force that the pulley would splinter.

She started to unravel the hemp ropes to separate the twines they were made of out. When she was done she took a good look at the pulley. It was a classic pulley from a block and tackle, with a hemp rope almost two inches in diameter running through it. She took one of the twines she had separated and passed it back and forth between the weaves of the rope, then tied the twine to itself. _Hopefully_ that would hold it together.

Nabooru took the remaining twines and the cloth and wrapped her hands and feet as best she could. The cloth was by far superior for keeping her from getting rope-burn, so she put it on her right hand.

She pulled up a length of the rope and made a loop on the ground with it. She put her left leg into the loop, then pulled the rest of the rope over her shoulder into a dulfersitz repel. She looked at her groin. Every inch of rope would pass between her legs against her groin. A man could never do this without protective clothing. She would almost certainly get blisters, anyway.

She took a deep breath, then stepped up to the edge and put her dagger between her teeth. She turned around and put the balls of her feet right at the edge. With her right hand carefully controlling how much rope she fed through, she slowly leaned back and started walking backwards down the cliff.

Ganondorf looked from the promontory from the Hyrule side of the chasm. On the other side a thin tan thread flapped as a tiny dot of brown skin and red hair slid down it.

"She appears to have found one of our exchanges." Maeroo said. "Would you like me to cross over and…clean this up?"

One thread went slack as the brown dot changed over to the next thread.

"That will be unneeded. Once she's to the bottom and she's had her drink she'll need to either cross-over or head down-stream. The Hyrule River is very swift and is barely above freezing." Ganondorf chuckled. "She'll get far more water than she bargained for. You may return to the fortress."

Maeroo bowed and walked off the promontory.

"Probably." Ganondorf turned to leave as well. "…But I'm still hoping you'll cling to life. I still have use for someone like you."

Nabooru had just used up her last length of twine to descend the last rope. She slid herself off the rope onto a loading platform cut into the cliff. The platform was flat on the downstream side, but then gently sloped down further upriver so that the river flooded part of the platform so it could be used as a dock. Nabooru walked down to the water and drank.

The water was so cold that it left a knot in her stomach until the water had finally warmed up. She would have to be patient and drink slowly.

After several minutes of drinking and resting, she stood and recovered her dagger and the strip of cloth. The dagger's sheath now had teeth-marks in it and parts of the cloth had been worn through.

She gave herself a once-over. Both her hands were developing blisters and a line of blisters from rope-burn wrapped around her where the rope had been with several blisters on her groin. There were a few marks still left from her torture, but the few marks that hadn't healed over were inconsequential against her new injuries.

She tried her best to treat the blisters with the cold river water, but it was a loosing battle against so many. Finally she just decided to do her best to ignore them.

She really didn't have any option but to ride the river downstream. Hyrule River's flow was so strong and the way back up so far that there really wasn't another choice.

The sun cleared the edge of the chasm. White ripples glistened on the river.

Nabooru gave a good look around. There was no wood or anything that could float, so she would have to just float herself down the river. There was a very real chance that she would get hypothermia if it took too long to get to Lake Hylia.

She tied the cloth strip to her dagger, then tied it around her neck. She took a few breaths and jumped in.


	13. Act 3 Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Acquinas" Egann kept walking as he rounded the corner and started down the path to Lake Hylia. "I should have known."

He walked across a few hundred yards of open grass and onto a promontory overlooking Lake Hylia. At the peak of the promontory was a blue house. Egann knocked on the door.

There was no answer.

He knocked again.

Again, no answer.

Egann turned the knob and slowly opened the door.

An old man in the back corner stood facing a table. He gingerly picked up a graduated beaker that had some light pink fluid and poured it into a larger beaker with a black fluid. Instantly the mixture fizzed slightly, then turned clear.

"Excuse me, professor-" Egann started.

"One moment. Let me finish this." The old professor picked up a third smaller beaker with another clear fluid in it. He tipped a few drops of its contents into the large beaker and the contents turned a vibrant red. "Just as expected."

"What's just as expected?"

"That this new mixture I've made is unlike any other mixture I've ever made." The man capped the graduated beaker and put it on a shelf. "I've always found it amazing how water from two different sources can look so similar, yet taste so radically different. In this experiment I've finally confirmed that the eye can't sense things that the tongue can. The next step is to see if I can figure out exactly what that something is."

Egann stood in silence. Acquinas had always been myopically interested in water. "Sir. I heard you designed Hyrule Castle Town's sewer system."

"Yeah. A long time ago. Why?"

"After the last Gerudo attack on Castle Town I noticed sewage was spilling into the moat."

"Then what you're looking at isn't damage from the fight. It's sabotage." The man walked over to a large drawer and started rummaging through papers in it. "The sewage lines are on a separate aqueduct system from the water that feeds the moat." He pulled out a diagram and handed it to Egann. "This is my original sketch. It's inaccurate in places where the design had to be adapted to the town, but other than that it should still be useful."

Egann looked over the diagram. The design was clearly based on a spider's web.

"As you can see, the water feeding the moat is just the excess water from the town. The sewage goes to a septic tank under the park inside of Castle Town."

"The field outside of Hyrule Castle?"

"Precisely."

"Well. All that doesn't change that there's sewage in the moat."

"Well, the only way that would be possible would be if someone blocked up a sewage line along the edge so it couldn't drain properly, then knocked a hole in it somewhere along the perimeter."

"Egann traced his finger over the edges of Castle Town on the diagram. "The sewage line is above the moat's full point?"

The professor nodded. "By about four feet. Gravity propels the whole of the aqueducts, including the sewer lines." The professor bent the corner of the diagram down so he could get a look. "Anyone who took a look at this diagram would know that sewage leaking into the moat wouldn't change anything: Moat water isn't used for anything. I wonder what the heck the Gerudo were thinking."

"Even so, it's a bad idea to let so much infected water fester. How do I fix it."

"Find where they blocked up the drains and unplug it. Dried mud should suffice for where the knocked a hole in it."

"Than-"

The door to the cabin was abruptly kicked in. A figure was silhouetted in sunlight in the doorway.


	14. Act 3 Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Nabooru had floated down the river on her back for several hours. She had made sure to keep her feet pointing downstream to ward off obstacles. She had tried to keep her head clear of the water, but she could tell that she was becoming hypothermic anyway: she couldn't feel her fingers anymore.

For the first few minutes she had been in the water, it had been so cold that she felt as if the heat of her life-force was being sucked directly out of her marrow. After those first few minutes, though, things had settled into a loss of sensation that started from her extremities and slowly crept up her limbs toward her chest. She could no longer feel anything beyond her wrists or knees, and she couldn't move her toes at all.

If she spent too much more time loosing control and sensation, even when she got to Lake Hylia she wouldn't have enough strength to get herself ashore.

Just to see how much strength she still had, she turned over onto her stomach and tried to swim downstream. Her arms were too weak to fully extend and she was left doggy-paddling. For a moment the effort of swimming restored some function to her limbs, but then Nabooru exhausted all of her energy and was forced to return to floating.

After a few minutes floating, she returned to swimming, this time towards the edge of the chasm. After some effort, she managed to pull herself out of the main current and brought herself close to the edge. When a small crevice in the wall passed her she jabbed her fist into it –skinning her knuckles in the process- and pulled herself clear of the water.

There she was. Freezing, dripping wet, bleeding, naked, and clinging to a rock-face.

She turned her head down and started breathing against the sandstone against her chest, hoping it would reflect some of the heat.

It didn't take long for her grip to weaken. Her hands were already numb, and eventually the strain of continually gripping made one of her hands go to sleep. When it peeled away from the rock-face she fell back into the water and felt the heat sucked from her again. She returned to the center of the current and continued on downstream.

A while passed and she returned to alternating floating and doggy-paddling downstream. It was almost evening when she the chasm vanished and the river widened and slowed. Nabooru was sluggish to realize what she had gotten to: the waterfall that separated the Hyrule River from Lake Hylia. She took a deep breath just as the current speeded up to a nearly brutal speed.

The water beneath her vanished and she was tumbling through a mist. She lost all sense of up and hit the water at an odd angle. A swarm of bubbles blinded her and her ears popped. When the bubbles finally started to clear she found herself in a strong downward current with the surface impossibly far away. She struggled not to panic and swam horizontally until she was clear of the current made by the waterfall.

She struggled to swim upward. The waves on the surface were so far away they looked like cracks in a mirror. Her body craved air and her lungs began to push hard against her chest like inflating balloons. She wasn't going to make it. Air started to leak out of her nose and it quickly became a torrent of bubbles she couldn't suppress.

Her head broke the surface and she inhaled deeply. She swam to shore and lay still on the bank until her breathing settled down and sensation began to return to her limbs.

She looked around. A blue building on a promontory overlooking Lake Hylia stood in front of her. She didn't know or care what kind of building that was: she needed food and clothing desperately.

She removed her dagger and retied it to her ankle. She walked up and peered into one of the windows.

The whole interior appeared to be a single room filled with tanks and beakers. Off to one corner two Hylian men were talking over a paper. The man in blue had gray hair down to the center of his back. He had to be too old to be anything other than harmless.

The other looked like he could be trouble. He was in his mid thirties and had a dagger tied to his belt. That didn't particularly matter, though: he had a cloak and a small burlap sack that had lots of little lumps in it. It was food.

She walked up to the door and drew her dagger, then abruptly kicked the door in.


	15. Act 3 Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Egann instantly reacted. He crouched and put his hand on his dagger. He looked up at the door, but the setting sun blinded him. He tried to step to the side to get out of the sunlight.

The figure in the doorway charged him. He was just about to draw when the butt end of a dagger contacted his temple. He was out cold before he hit the ground.

A splash of water woke him up.

Acquinas held an empty beaker over him. "You've just been mugged by a naked Gerudo. She took your cloak and that sack of yours."

Egann sat up. "Huh? A Gerudo, but she was alone?"

"I'm just tellin' you what I saw." The professor returned to his beakers. "She appeared to have been after that stuff specifically. She hightailed it outta here as soon as she had them."

Egann stood and shook himself. "Thanks for your help, but it would seem I have something else to do before heading back to fix that moat."

"What's in the sack that important?"

"No. It's just some hard-tack." Egann sighed. "Regardless, I should trail her just to make sure she doesn't cause any further trouble."

The Gerudo's trail was easy to follow, even though the ground was too hard to have footprints. The trick was to look for bent over grasses and draw a straight line. The line clearly did not return to the desert.

About an hour after sunset he saw a glint of red: a fire. He pulled out his eyepatch and put it over one of his eyes as he approached.

A lone figure was crouched next to a fire. Even though it was from the back he could tell that it was his cloak.

Egann plucked a branch from a bush and snapped it.

The figure spun around. It was the Gerudo. She pulled out a dagger on her ankle. "You here to take back your stuff?!" She was clearly defensive.

"Well, clothing is expensive…but no." Egann dropped the branch and walked forward. "I just want to know why a lone Gerudo is out in Hyrule Field."

"I've been banished. That suffice?"

Egann kept walking forward.

"Stay put." She warned. "I was gentle last time. This time I'll kill you if I need to."

Egann didn't break his pace. "Was that 'being gentle' part why you were banished?"

The Gerudo stood still.

"I may not know much about the Gerudo, but I know that they value ruthlessness." Egann was almost in her face. "My guess is that if you were banished for being too gentle, you won't be able to bring yourself to kill me." He put the dagger's tip against his solar plexus.

The Gerudo dropped the dagger and fell to her knees sobbing.

Egann exhaled. He knelt next to her. "You mind telling me?"

She hugged him. "It's just…" her voice cracked. "Gerudo don't think there is anything that is 'wrong' morally because right and wrong are just what those in power dictate. I disagreed and was…disposed of. What really hurts is that I don't even think that it changed anything."

Egann hugged her back. "The outcome isn't everything. You tried, that's more that can be said of most."

"Most Gerudo or Hylians?"

"Is there really that much of a difference?"

She buried her head in his shoulder and cried for a moment longer.

"The name's Egann of Therin province."

"Nabooru."

"Well, Nabooru, do you mind helping me end this war?"

Nabooru sighed and wiped her tears. "I doubt we can."

"Then at least we will have tried."


End file.
